Dark Night Of My Soul

Your life will have highs and lows but it's all part of God's plan.

My spirit was dead and life had eluded me. Everything had become unbearable. God had made me to be simple and to serve Him, but I made such a mess of things. The whole idea of life was now confusing, and in this forest of my life I learned many things while forgetting most of them. The price of my forgetting would cost me dearly over the years.

My experiences in life have been so disjointed and counterproductive, yet ironically they’ve helped me grow into a vibrant, spiritual awareness that couldn’t have been possible without them. This book documents my journey through both pain and pleasure and will show you through my own actions how pain can become inspiring and pleasure can become destructive. When we neglect our spiritual duties, our lives can come crashing down faster than a rotten tree hit by lightning. Yet when we follow our spiritual duties, we receive joy far beyond anything we could ever hope for.

You will follow me through some of my most humiliating adventures, yet you will also watch me embrace the Lord with a new reverence as I grip the essence of my pain and despair while searching out the true meaning of my life.

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Yes, I’m a preacher, a man who speaks the Word of God. Yet I was tempted, often, by enchanted whispers from voices within myself that wanted to lead me off my rightful path. Foolishly, I listened, forgetting my lessons about worshipping false gods.

Born on September 1, 1954, in Seneca, South Carolina, the younger of two boys, my mother, Fannie Mae, was crippled and sickly most all of her life. But by God’s grace she lived to be eighty. She somehow always had a laugh, and she was such a beautiful lady.

My addictions have tormented me for over thirty-five years, and I’m still in occasional torment by them. The insanity people experience in situations like mine is sometimes permanent. It also causes many people who I thought were my friends to separate themselves from me, and I’m okay with that!

My genetic makeup was that of a habitual nature, but I had no idea what I was in for. I guess it all started back in 1971 when I went into the military. Before then, I was just a lonely little country boy who thought he wanted to see the world and leave all of his poverty and loneliness behind. My grandparents who raised me were poor. My mother was sick. And I lived in a forlorn world isolated from city or town life. When I look back on all of this, I can see clearly how it affected the essence in me.